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Worlds of Arthur: Facts and Fictions of the Dark Ages, by Guy Halsall
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King Arthur is probably the most famous and certainly the most legendary medieval king. From the early ninth century through the middle ages, to the Arthurian romances of Victorian times, the tales of this legendary figure have blossomed and multiplied. And in more recent times, there has been a continuous stream of books claiming to have discovered the 'facts' about, or to unlock the secret or truth behind, the 'once and future king'.
Broadly speaking, there are two Arthurs. On the one hand is the traditional 'historical' Arthur, waging a doomed struggle to save Roman civilization against the relentless Anglo-Saxon tide during the darkest years of the Dark Ages. On the other is the Arthur of myth and legend - accompanied by a host of equally legendary people, places, and stories: Lancelot, Guinevere, Galahad and Gawain, Merlin, Excalibur, the Lady in the Lake, the Sword in the Stone, Camelot, the Round Table.
The big problem with all this is that 'King Arthur' might well never have existed. And if he did exist, it is next to impossible to say anything at all about him. As this challenging new look at the Arthur legend makes clear, all books claiming to reveal 'the truth' behind King Arthur can safely be ignored. Not only the 'red herrings' in the abundant pseudo-historical accounts, even the 'historical' Arthur is largely a figment of the imagination: the evidence that we have - whether written or
archaeological - is simply incapable of telling us anything detailed about the Britain in which he is supposed to have lived, fought, and died. The truth, as Guy Halsall reveals in this fascinating investigation, is both radically different - and also a good deal more intriguing.
- Sales Rank: #532510 in eBooks
- Published on: 2013-02-14
- Released on: 2013-02-14
- Format: Kindle eBook
Most helpful customer reviews
37 of 41 people found the following review helpful.
An Assured Review of the Material
By Pop Bop
It would appear that I fall squarely into Professor Halsall's target readership. I am not an academic or a person with a professional interest in the Arthur question. I have a passing familiarity with Arthur scholarship, with the source materials (Geoffrey of Monmouth, Aneirin and so on), and with the early history of Britain. I am curious about what there is to be known about the "Arthur of History", and in a larger sense what there is to be known about England and Wales in the relevant time period. That said, I have to report that I found Prof. Halsall's book informative, even handed and entertaining. Further, as an amateur at best, I also found it clear, engaging and manageable.
Prof Halsall declares at the outset that he is, with regard to Arthur, a "romantic Arthur agnostic". While he finds no serious evidence for Arthur's existence he also finds no evidence that conclusively establishes that there was no Arthur, and in this vacuum he shares the hope that there might have been an Arthur, and all the better if there was.
The immediate point of this book is to debunk a great amount of popular writing, and questionable scholarship, that has twisted or exaggerated the evidence to prove the existence of a great King Arthur. One gets the impression that perhaps the greatest motivator here is frustration over the fact that serious academics have not defended their turf and have abandoned the issue to gifted quacks.
If the only thing going for this book was tedious debunking, and the academic equivalent of a who-knows shrug, there wouldn't be much to recommend. Like UFO debunkers and Bermuda Triangle debunkers, and the like, the argument would become tedious well beyond the average reader's interest level. But there is much more happening in these pages. Because Prof. Halsall is deeply and broadly knowledgeable about the period in question, the examination of the Arthur myth goes hand in hand with a review of what is best known about the period, and incidentally about what is most interesting about the period.
This interest is compounded by the fact that Prof. Halsall is an engaging writer and an amiable companion as he takes the reader through the period, the sources, the current understandings, the latest archaeological findings, and the like. We have made such advances that we now know "for certain" less about fifth- and sixth-century British history than we knew "for certain" in 1975, but that does not detract from the interest of the material or the interest of the larger explanation of how academics try to piece together what can be known.
So, if you are interested in historical Arthur, this is a good choice. If you are interested in fifth- and sixth-century Britain, this is a good choice. If you would just like a very well written illustration of how professional historians and archaeologists go about trying to understand a distant, almost lost, but well defined time and place, this would be a fine choice.
Please note that I received a free advance ecopy of this book in exchange for a candid review. Except for that I have no connection at all to the author or the publisher of this book.
19 of 20 people found the following review helpful.
First Class Scholarship
By JPS
This is certainly one of the best pieces of scholarship I have read over the past few years, and the best I have come across up to now on the End of Roman Britain, the so-called "Saxon Invasions" and the Dark Ages. It is both a very useful and a very necessary book, given the rather controversial topics that it covers. In addition, it is written in a clear and entertaining way.
The first of its numerous merits is to attempt (very successfully, in my view) to "set the record straight", sometimes with virulence. It does this by keeping to what we really know about this period. Unlike the multiple existing books on "King Arthur" and his times, on the end of Roman Britain and on the coming of the Saxons, it tries to stick to both the very few and somewhat dubious written sources and to the archaeological material without jumping to pre-conceived conclusions.
The second merit of this book is that it does show that the supposed "Arthur of History" may very well not have existed, and that it is currently simply impossible to prove either his existence or his entirely legendary nature. What the author does show, however, is that the conditions prevailing in Britain during the 5th and 6th century were such that several warlords might have at times become sufficiently powerful dominate swaths of Britain, just like they would during the 7th century.
The third merit of this book is to present in its first part ("Old Worlds") and its second part, respectively, "the traditional ideas about what became to Britain after the Roman Empire" in what the author calls the "modern "pseudo-histories" and the ways in which scholars and academic view the period nowadays. This, together with the third part ("Mad Worlds - Red Herrings and Old Chestnuts") walks us through some of the main (and misleading) arguments about the "historical Arthur" and the end of Roman Britain (of which "UnRoman Britain" and Stuart Laycock's other books are just one example).
Halsall's book would have been very valuable in itself if it had just stopped here. This is because it uncovers the assumptions and exposes the rather dubious methods that authors have been using to make their point and present "the truth" about the end of Roman Britain. One piece which I found particularly interesting was to show how little value can really be placed in the DNA studies that have been conducted on sample populations in certain areas of the United Kingdom and of Germany to demonstrate the existence of common genetic and geographical origins. More generally, the author exposes a rather widespread tendency among authors to be selective in both the archaeological data they use and the interpretations they draw from it, and to neglect what does not fit with their pre-conceived theories.
There is, however, much more to the book than this. Part 4 ("New Worlds?") makes up almost half the size of the book and contains the author's own - and very interesting - views. Regardless of whether one agrees or not and whether readers will find him convincing or not, he does argue very convincingly and make a number of crucial points.
One is the need for systematic comparative analysis with what was happening across the Channel and in Spain, and more particularly in Northern Gaul during the 5th and 6th centuries. As the author puts it, studies of this period have often tended to have an "insular" character, therefore minimizing the similarities (but also the differences) with what happened elsewhere in the Western part of the Roman Empire.
Another is the need to avoid simplistic oppositions between "Romano-Britons" and "Saxons", just like historians on the mainland are starting to overcome the dichotomy between "Gallo-Romans" and "Barbarians" (whether Franks, Goths, Alamans, Alains, Sueves, Burgondes or Vandals, to mention only these). As the author shows rather well in this book (and in his previous book "Barbarian Migrations on the Roman West", 2007), the opposition between "Barbarians" and "Romans" needs to be qualified, at a minimum, given the interactions between the Empire and the populations coming from outside of it. One of the multiple consequences is that the so-called "Barbarians" had been subject to Roman influences for decades, if not for centuries, generally wanted to settle within the Empire, rather than destroy it. Significant numbers had already been brought into the Empire well before the 5th century, and possibly as early as the first century AD, to serve in the Roman forces and at least some of these returned to their homelands with enhanced status as a consequence.
A third point is that, far from being an "invasion", the arrival of "Saxon" (but also Angles, Jutes etc...) war bands in Roman Britain was probably the result of a deliberate policy by the Roman authorities at the end of the 4th century. These bands seem to have been used to garrison specific and strategic areas, allowing for the military authorities to (temporarily) withdraw troops to participate in the civil wars for the control of the Empire.
A further point shown by the author is that the power vacuum, fragmentation and economic crisis that took place during the first years of the 5th century lead to endemic civil wars between the various factions in Britain, with the federate war bands having to take sides. This, of course, is a rather different, more realistic, but less palatable story that the opposition between the heroic resistance of the "Romano-Britons" against the invading "Saxons", with the later slowly taking over all of the lowland parts of the country by sheer weight of numbers and by taking advantages of the infighting between Britons. It is also a somewhat more realistic story since something quite similar was happening on the continent during the same period.
Another fascinating point that the author discusses at length is the nature and scale of the Saxon migration and of the Saxon settlement and the numerous problems that it raises. Britain was not flooded with migrants, and neither was the Western Empire swamped by "Hordes of Barbarians". However, Guy Halsall does show that migrants trickled in over a period of about 150 years, probably a much longer period than on the continent, but that the migrations were not one-sided. Some Germanic populations returned to the mainland and some Saxons settled in Normandy or in the Loire valley, while Britons migrating to Armorica (modern Brittany, in France) and Irish migrated to actual Scotland and Wales. With regards to settlements, the author also shows the difficulties in attributing specific findings to specific ethnical groups.
More generally, he very convincingly shows how and why pre-existing populations might quite rapidly be seen as "Saxons" and become assimilated. This would happen within one or two generations, regardless of their ethnic and geographic background, as they would adopt the appearance, language and customs of the now-dominant group, just like their ancestors had become "Romano-Britons" a few centuries before.
As readers will have guessed by my rather overlong review, I got carried away by this rather excellent book which I cannot recommend enough. Had it been possible, I would have rated it seven or ten stars...
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful.
Fantastic book for all of you King Arthur fanatics
By Amazon Customer
I am a huge, wait a minute-- HUGE (that's better)-- King Arthur fan. So, when I saw this book, I had to have it. I have to thank the publisher, Oxford University Press, for trusting this book to a new blogger who has yet to blog about a non-fiction book.
The Quick & Dirty: Author Guy Halsall has an issue with all of the flawed (and hopeful) research out there trying to prove the unprovable. This is a comprehensive book about the known history of the Britain that is thought to be Arthur's Britain; the research that has been done about Arthur; and the questions that need to be answered (among other things).
The Good: This book covers a lot of information. It thoroughly examines the existing research on the subject of King Arthur and his court. I was actually surprised by how much information was covered in a 384 page book. It's clear that Halsall is more than knowledgable about the subject and he presents the material in a scholarly way, by giving us the scoop on the existing research and providing supporting evidence that either contradicts or illustrates how the researcher may have come to a false conclusion.
The Bad: I wouldn't necessarily say it's "bad", but this book was by no means an easy read. I definitely felt like I was reading it for one of my college research papers. It was a little dry, as scholarly pieces tend to be.
I, also, found the author's tone to be little...belligerent?... in regards to all of the information that supports the existence of Arthur. Clearly, this was because he is passionate about his own research. But, I'm not sure the tone was necessary. It was a little off-putting but, with the exception of the introduction, it was scarce.
Also, if you don't have extensive knowledge about the "Arthur argument", you probably won't pick up what the author is putting down.
The Bottom Line: If you love all things King Arthur, are open to new opinions, and don't mind a tedious read, this book will definitely tickle your fancy.
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